A few weeks ago, Summit Entertainment released the first seven minutes of The Brothers Bloom online. Normally, this kind of marketing strategy is useful, particularly if the movie isn’t well known. However, it helps for such a movie to have a terrific opening, which grabs the viewer in and makes him/her need to see what happens after that teased beginning. The Brothers Bloom, unfortunately, has an unbearable start, enough that I couldn’t even get through the entire seven minutes. I turned the streaming video off at the 4:24 mark.

The primary cause of my annoyance was the voice-over narration, provided by actor/magician Ricky Jay, a man whose speech is easily recognizable, only not for good reason. His lisped reading, sounding like a poor man’s Wallace Shawn, ruined the movie for me immediately. And I decided within those few moments that I wouldn’t bother to go see The Brother’s Bloom in its entirety.

I later learned that Jay’s narration is only in the film for that seven-minute prologue that opens the film, so I am willing to give it another shot, with hope that it gets better. Due to my initial irritation, though, I’ve decided to share a list of ten other movies ruined by their voice-over narration.

10. Dances with Wolves (1990)

This is an example where the use of voice-over narration is acceptable, but the actor supplying this narration is not. Kevin Costner is barely tolerable when he speaks dialogue, so it’s especially annoying to have to listen to him non-diegetically, too. Is the film’s narration even necessary? Probably not, but it at least makes sense because Lt. Dunbar’s story is told through his journal entries. If only there had been some way to have a third party read those entries. Unfortunately, employing another character to speak in Dunbar’s words would have been confusing. And, though it’s not always the case, this kind of narration is supposed to make the film clearer to the audience.

9. Joan of Arc (1948)

Often, it’s the studio that imposes a narrator onto a film in order to make the story clearer to the viewer. And often, it’s the studio’s fault in the first place that the film isn’t easy to follow without omniscient voice-over. Victor Fleming’s version of Joan of Arc originally clocked in at 145 minutes, but after its disappointing general release, RKO removed nearly a third of the film and added narration to fill in for the missing scenes. Fortunately, as is also often the case in these situations, the full-length cut was restored for its 50th anniversary, and now the voice-over is only at the beginning of the picture.

8. Dark City (1998)

Voice-over at the beginning of a movie isn’t always as acceptable as it is in Joan of Arc, of course. I’ve already pointed that out with The Brothers Bloom. Similarly, the opening of Dark City has an obnoxious, studio-imposed voice-over narration that fortunately only lasts a few moments. Despite its short existence, though, Kiefer Sutherland’s narration is overly expository and reveals too much too soon, irritating those of us who’d prefer more mystery. This was all somewhat remedied in a director’s cut, released to DVD last year, which removes the narration from the beginning and moves it to a more acceptable location in the film. I say somewhat, because the revision doesn’t change the fact that I had to put up with the plot-spoiling narration in my first viewing.

7. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Morgan Freeman has an awesome voice, but that doesn’t mean that he has to narrate every movie he’s in. And the more he’s employed for voice-over work, particularly with films he appears in, the more saturated his excellent narration in The Shawshank Redemption becomes. Although there is some purpose to Freeman’s character narrating Million Dollar Baby, this purpose is not entirely essential to the film. Is it unbearable? No, in fact Freeman’s voice makes the film more comfortable to the audience. But that’s partly what annoys me about the narration; it seems a deceptive trick used to smooth over how otherwise insufferable the film is. Well, hell, you could probably put his voice over any of the worst films ever made and make them seem Oscar-worthy, too.

6. The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Orson Welles was even more an overused narrator than Freeman, and in his later years he seemed willing (and financially desperate) to provide his voice to anything. Many times he came across as bored in these voice-overs, yet none were as bad as his narration in The Lady from Shanghai, which he also wrote, directed and stars in. The film, like the majority of his work, is a visual masterpiece, but it’s an auditory nightmare, because Welles speaks, in character, with an Irish accent that’s worse on the ears than nails on a blackboard. Like with Dances with Wolves, it’s bad enough having to hear the guy speak dialogue, and so the narration puts me over the edge. I can’t even think of a good reason why it’s needed. If it weren’t for my appreciation for the squeaky voice of Everett Sloane, I’d probably be fine watching the film with the sound off.

5. Dune (1984)

Similar to what happened with Fleming’s Joan of Arc, David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune was ordered to be shortened by its studio. And again, in order to fill in gaps, voice-over narration was added to the film. Lots of voice-over narration, from multiple characters, with whispered speech explaining inner thoughts and detailed exposition. This time, though, the running time was decreased prior to release, and there is apparently no director’s cut. So, we’ll never know if a three- or four-hour version would have been more comprehensible.

4. Little Children (2006)

There are a lot of things I hate about Little Children, so I must admit that Will Lyman’s voice-over narration isn’t what completely kills the film for me. But because so many of its fans really like the narration, I am even more irritated by it than I could be. Basically, I find the very detached, very sardonic omniscient narration to be too literary. It gives evidence for why Little Children is meant to be a novel and not a film. Sure, many stories can be told in multiple media, but some should be left alone to their originally intended form. This is one of those stories.

3. Bustin’ Down the Door (2008)

Another thing I dislike about the narrator of Little Children is the way he seems to have contempt for all the characters in his story. But at least that’s probably intentional. The makers of the surfing documentary Bustin’ Down the Door, on the other hand, could not have meant for Edward Norton to sound disgusted with the film’s subjects. Yet that’s how the actor comes off while narrating the story of pro surfing in Hawaii during the 1970s, as if his angry character from either American History X or 25th Hour was the one at the microphone. Norton doesn’t always sound pissed off and contemptuous, though; other times he simply sounds bored. It may be the most ill-fitting doc voice-over in history.

2. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

The voice-over narration of Vicky Cristina Barcelona would be terrible in its own right, but it earns the near-top spot on this list because of how it relates to other Woody Allen films. Radio Days, for instance, has one of the best voice-over narrations of the past thirty years. And Manhattan’s narration is exceptional, too. Would VCB have been better had the narrator been voiced by Allen rather than Christopher Evan Welch? Maybe a little better, but even that would not have helped too much, because it’s still lazy and often redundant exposition, and Allen has apparently even admitted that he employed it out of ease rather than necessity. Few films illustrate the negative side of voice-over better than this one. VCB should be shown in screenwriting classes as an example of what not to do.

1. Blade Runner (1982)

As usual, the most obvious and infamous title is the one deserving of the #1 position on a list. When the phrase “worst voice-over narration” is written or spoken, it provokes first and foremost memories of Harrison Ford’s voice-over from the original cut of Blade Runner. While appropriate in theory, given the film noir aspect of the movie, in reality the narration is terrible. That’s more due to the writing rather than the concept, though, and it might be interesting to see someone (Ridley Scott, a fan, or whoever) make one more cut of the film, inserting better-scripted lines for the voice-over, and using that narration more sparingly and necessarily. It might still not work, and maybe that’s just something that separates future noir from film noir, as a genre. But enough people like to defend the narration, so a part of me wants to think it was at least a good idea and should have just been done more effectively.